The Jester's Madness
by whinstun
Summary: You- a prideful Khajiit and the Fool Cicero. How will this play out?


Here I'm standing, in front of an unhurt Cicero, brand new. I never wanted to hurt him, but in the end it was my own fault. I told the guard he was probably smuggling weapons and other illegal things because I knew that farmer was sitting on about a whole mountain of gold, and then it had come to bite me in the ass. I find him funny. Not particularly uplifting or anything, but very amusing. His odd comments and weird dances were just plain crazy but it has a charm-- Cicero, to say the least, is a very acquired taste. So when he tells me he wants to be my follower, I happily accept. Oh what a pair of fools we make: a Jester in Daedric Black Mail and a Khajiit in an execution hood. Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally against killing, it's more so that I've closed myself off to the thoughts of my victims and their feelings. Cicero, though, seems to get joy and thrill out of killing. Before the Dawnstar Sanctuary was our home, Cicero had journals laying about. When I read the first one, I thought to myself 'This is odd.. he sounds… sane,' and as I continued to read, I watched his slow descent into madness begin. Oh how alone he was. Everyone he loved died. He was left with only the Night Mother, of whom would not speak to him. He traveled for so, so many years to reach me. To reach us. And now I am listener and it's dumbfounded me. The only close call to this is when I was finding out I was the Dragonborn. But that was almost two years ago. I have since met Daedric Princes, become Master of the Thieves Guild in my lovely town of Riften and even had to become the Arch-Mage of a College (to which I declined-- I'm an explorer, not an authority figure for students, especially with my limited knowledge of the Mage's Arts). So yes, I have good reason to think myself to a high status, especially among many others around me. I've worked hard for this title and ventured endlessly. Yet, I am faced here with someone who is so unfathomably tortured and hurt and now trapped inside of his own head. So yes, I take him and his mad, sadistic, and very acutely odd ways and venture. We coax our contacts into 2,000 gold a kill instead of half that. And it's worth it. So now I'm sat here with my newly found friend Cicero in a tavern somewhere in the middle of nowhere, similar to the Nightingale Inn, but homeier. Cicero seems to like it. I fancy it to be much like him. On the outside it's snowing down hard and there are no lights in the sky tonight. A pitch black and you can faintly hear a wolf over the wind if it goes quiet enough. Yet here on the inside, all of these voices join in with a Bard'sin cheerful song. There are so many candles lit that you practically have to hold your plate in your lap to not get wax dripped on it. There's a lovely Nord woman taking orders from lovely drunken men and as I look around at all of these characters, I realize I'm the only other woman here. It's nice, though. The smell of the blue mountain flowers hanging in bushels on the walls and some other ingredients like elf ears and other things mix into a scent that smells vaguely of mint and honey. Cicero smells like honey and Moon Sugar. And as I'm looking around, taking this all in, making some sort of plan to maybe even build a settlement nearby, my whiskers twitch. Cicero is looking at me. Cicero doesn't speak aside from the cheery yet strange tunes and comments about our Mother. We don't need to talk. We understand each other enough and when we do it's when I'm telling him what to do or who to attack. Yet when he turned to me and spoke, his voice was low. Not low like a growl, but more like a groan of pain. "Cicero is tired... a bed perhaps.. may suffice?" He said to me. When we stood so I could go to pay the Innkeeper, I was reminded of my height. Cicero is a rather short man, but I'm still shorter than him. It's odd how females of my kind are on the short side, yet males are taller than most Argonians. So I looked at him a bit, and off we set. I got four sweet rolls and a room with two beds for the night. We went up to the room. We each had two sweet rolls. I ate slowly. Cicero practically inhaled his, so I gave him the other one I had since I still had a half of one yet to eat. "Thank you," he giggled under his breath like a child "Oh thank you my dear listener!" He half muttered whilst laughing to himself. I truly do wonder what is so funny to him. And with every laugh I'm plagued with the thought of the jester's laugh and how it haunts Cicero. With every break in his voice, all of the sudden ups and downs, I wonder if he picked that habit up from that bastard. I wonder. And just as I'm wondering, I wander into sleep.


End file.
